


They were schoolboys, never held an anti-tank rocket

by tenlittlebullets



Category: Doctor Who (1963), Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-16
Updated: 2013-01-16
Packaged: 2017-11-25 18:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/641580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenlittlebullets/pseuds/tenlittlebullets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ace at the barricade. What more do you need?</p>
            </blockquote>





	They were schoolboys, never held an anti-tank rocket

It had been shaping up to be a real tragedy, one of those lamentably sticky situations where a lot of people were going to die and the Doctor couldn't intervene. That distracted-looking young man had been remarkably close to the truth when he said all wars were civil wars, particularly in these nineteenth-century clashes of ideals where there were far more heroes than monsters on any given side. Not that the Doctor didn't have his sympathies among those ideals! But he could hardly go about mucking things up so that these young men won in 1832, not without throwing a very nasty wrench in the development of communism and potentially erasing recent bits of his own timeline--and he'd prefer Fenric to stay defeated, thank you very much, so it looked like tragedy and mass slaughter were the only things on the menu until they could dig the TARDIS out from the bottom of the barricade's foundations.

And then the gargantuan eyeless vermiforms started tunnelling their way out of the Paris sewer system, which made everything... very simple, really.

"Ace," he said, keeping one eye distractedly on the corner of the redoubt where revolutionaries and National Guardsmen were working together to enlarge a gap in the barricade enough to drag the cannon inside. Then, more sharply, "Ace!"

Ace emerged from the alleyway slightly dishevelled and sporting the irrepressible M. de Courfeyrac's top hat. "Right here, Professor!"

"Ace, you'd never be so irresponsible as to bring anachronistic weaponry to a time period that still hasn't got the hang of rifled barrels, would you?" Twenty paces away, one of the giant worms writhed and screeched under a hail of grapeshot, seemingly more annoyed than anything else.

"Professor! What do you take me for?"

"And you certainly wouldn't misappropriate technology that's far beyond your own time period, for scurrilous and petty reasons such as fitting more weaponry into that backpack of yours?"

"Of course not, I--hey! How did you know about that?"

The Doctor just tapped his chin thoughtfully with the handle of his umbrella. "Ace, I can't tell you how reassuring it is to know my trust in you isn't misplaced. It means I don't have to worry about you committing acts of brazen recklessness such as, say, helping out our friends over there with a couple of canisters of Nitro-9."

Ace bounded over to the thick of the fighting, her eyes alight as though Christmas had come early. The combatants were inclined to wave her away impatiently and tell her this was no place for a girl--that is, until two deafening explosions broke out and the nearest worms were reduced to so many ribbons of stinking guts on the unpaved street.

"How--" managed Combeferre, his jaw hanging open.

"Well," said Enjolras, "this changes our strategy considerably."

Courfeyrac, bounding up behind Ace, found it fitting to express his admiration in vocabulary he'd borrowed from her: "Oh, _wicked_."

The Doctor watched from the background, plotting their next move. It was just as well Ace was having her fun now, because she was doubtless going to be unhappy about having to trek through the sewers--which probably defied all human attempts at mapping them at this stage in the infestation. And sooner or later, once this had all blown over, he was going to have a stern chat with the Silurians about livestock control.

At the center of her circle of admirers, Ace grinned and knelt down to fish the anti-tank rockets out of her backpack--which, as the Doctor suspected, had become considerably bigger on the inside. "You boys haven't seen anything yet. Here, catch!"


End file.
